Writing
Rationale
At Houghton Conquest Primary School we believe that the ability to write (or put ideas into print) is fundamental to our children succeeding; enabling them to access the next stage of their education and beyond. Our curriculum has been designed to ensure that pupils enjoy and take pride in their writing and have passion and enthusiasm for it.
Our aim is to ensure that pupils write clearly, accurately, and coherently; write in different styles and for different purposes and audiences; develop a wide vocabulary and a solid understanding of the grammar rules and terminology appropriate for their age group.
Intent
Our intent is for all children at Houghton Conquest to:
- Write with confidence, clarity and imagination
- Provide meaningful writing experiences using the contexts inspired by our exciting creative curriculum topics;
- Develop their imagination, creativity, expressive language and critical awareness through their writing;
- Inspire pupils to write through exciting shared experiences;
- Model high standard writing to secure high expectations and inspire writers;
- Ensure children are taught and recognise the range of social functions that writing can perform e.g. persuade, instruct, inform, and entertain;
- Plan, draft, revise and edit their own work, and learn how to self- and peer-assess against the success criteria;
- Enable children to demonstrate the ability to choose the appropriate form and content to suit the purpose and audience.
Our intent is to develop, through our teaching of writing, the following attitudes:
- Curiosity and interest
- Critical appraisal
- Independence
- Confidence
- Perseverance
- Imagination
Implementation
We have chosen HFL Education’s ESSENTIALWRITING as the basis of our writing curriculum for years 1-6. This is an ambitious and progressive writing scheme which provides our children with opportunities and tools to write for a range of specific purposes and authentic audiences. As a result, our children feel inspired and ready to write high-quality outcomes within the classroom but also have the knowledge, strategies and confidence to choose to write in their own lives.
At Houghton Conquest we teach writing by:
- Ensuring each writing unit is planned in accordance with the national curriculum objectives.
- Each unit begins with a purpose for writing. Tasks are progressive and provide an accumulation of knowledge and skills required to complete the ‘end task’ for the unit.
- Where possible using ICT to improve children’s communication skills and to give a different platform to present / perform their work.
- Essentials for writing carefully maps out the progression of writing skills throughout the year to ensure coverage of a variety of genres. Grammar and punctuation rules are taught as part of Literacy sequences of work to fit to the writing genre.
- Supporting pupils to develop positive attitudes and stamina for writing through regular extended writing opportunities.
- Encouraging pupils to plan, draft and edit their work using purple polishing pens/pencils.
- Providing vocabulary resources within all lessons to support children understanding of rich and challenging vocabulary. Children are challenged to use these within their own independent writing.
- Celebrating amazing writing through writing assemblies, in class rewards and whole school big write displays.
Writing skills are taught in a range of ways:
Handwriting – Explicit, standalone handwriting lessons take place in each year group. Reception and Year 1 follow Little Wandle Handwriting scheme. From years 2-6 we follow LetterJoin as our guidance for progression and letter formation. It is our expectation that most children will be using joined cursive handwriting by the end of year 2, while year 1 will be using a pre-cursive style to ensure correct letter formation is secure and ready to begin joining in year 2. More information can be found on our Handwriting page.
Modelled Writing – The teacher talks aloud the thought processes as a writer. They model strategies in front of the children, communicating the strategies being used. They have complete control over the writing and make explicit the structure, language features, spelling and punctuation of the text type as appropriate.
Shared Writing – This is a collaborative approach; pupils contribute their ideas and thoughts for the teacher to select the most appropriate. The teacher models and teaches specific writing skills and there is opportunity for discussion to choose the most effective or suitable ideas.
Supported Composition – The children work in pairs to provide the next sentence of the text. This may follow from either the modelled or shared writing process.
Independent Writing – Children are given opportunities to apply their understanding of the text type in their own writing. They are encouraged to plan, draft, write, edit and assess their work, applying the skills they have learnt throughout the unit of work for the specific genre. This is vitally important if children are to develop their skills as writers within different genres.
Writing Inspiration Days – Once a year children all take part in a ‘Big Write’. Big Write weeks are planned to excite all the children and provide meaningful context to inspire children to write. These weeks will entail a theme that all children across the school take part in and write about. During these weeks learning is centred around one theme and each year groups plans their writing based around this. This writing is them used as moderation across the school.
Spelling:
Children are taught spellings through the use of letter clusters, using the LOOK, COVER, WRITE, CHECK, technique i.e. LOOK carefully at the word, COVER the word, WRITE the word down, CHECK to see if you were correct. Spellings are sent home to reinforce learning. We encourage pupils not only to learn spellings but extend their vocabulary through the use of a dictionary and thesaurus.
Impact
The impact on our children is that they have the knowledge and skills to be able to write successfully for a purpose and audience and that they have a love for writing, being inspired as writers by a range of stimuli. They become confident writers and have the ability to plan, draft and edit their own work. By the end of Year 6 children are confident writers who communicate ideas clearly, creatively, and purposefully for different audiences and purposes. As all aspects of English are an integral part of the curriculum: skills taught in the English lesson are transferred into other subjects. This shows consolidation of skills and a deeper understanding of how and when to use specific language, grammar and punctuation.
Attainment in writing is measured consistently throughout the year. At the three assessment checkpoints, progress is tracked, using our internal tracking tool.
For those children who have yet to access the Year 1 statements, pre key stage statements are used.
Termly moderations take place, to quality assure judgements made. These are either in house, or as part of a cluster of local schools. All Year groups attend a local moderation event once a year in the Spring or Summer term, where judgements are verified.
End of Key Stage writing: teachers will assess a selection of pieces of writing in Year 2 and 6 using this to inform reported Teacher assessment judgements. Exemplification materials are used to support judgements made.
